cakephp controller testing - how to test actions which require authorization?

Question

The title pretty much says it all. I would like to test e.g. UsersController::admin_index() action, but it's required for the user to be authorized to access this location, therefore when I run the test it sends me to the login page and even when I log in manully, no tests are done.

So how can I force cake to skip authorization without editing the actual authorization code?

btw, in case it helps, my testAdminIndex() code looks like this:

function testAdminIndex() {     
    $result = $this->testAction('/admin/users/index');      
    debug($result); 
}

Answer 1

There's an article that covers the subject here ...

http://mark-story.com/posts/view/testing-cakephp-controllers-the-hard-way

The recommendation is to bypass "testAction" completely and manually perform the request, after adding session values for the authenticated user. The example is as follows ...

function testAdminEdit() {
    $this->Posts->Session->write('Auth.User', array(
        'id' => 1,
        'username' => 'markstory',
    ));
    $this->Posts->data = array(
        'Post' => array(
            'id' => 2,
            'title' => 'Best article Evar!',
            'body' => 'some text',
        ),
        'Tag' => array(
            'Tag' => array(1,2,3),
        )
    );
    $this->Posts->params = Router::parse('/admin/posts/edit/2');
    $this->Posts->beforeFilter();
    $this->Posts->Component->startup($this->Posts);
    $this->Posts->admin_edit();
}